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Suggestions for Handling Problems of Emotional Development in Children

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Suggestions for Handling Problems of Emotional Development in Children!

It remains to bring together the implications pervading this article regarding the handling of problems of emotional frus­tration and fulfillment.

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The following suggestions appear of most importance.

The Importance of Going Back of Symptoms to the Underlying Situation:

It is first of all fundamental to recognize the inadequacy of simply treating symptoms without consideration of the under­lying situation and the possible effect of the treatment upon it. The pupil who is belligerent, morose, daydreaming, or truant is not adequately dealt with if punished for his aggression, berated for his moodiness, rudely interrupted in his “wool-gathering,” or pursued by the attendance officer; instead, the treatment may in each instance aggravate the basic difficulty.

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The important questions are: What frustration or confusion is causing the ag­gressiveness or moodiness or the real or imaginary flight from the schoolroom? How may that situation be cleared up? Can a reasonable satisfaction of the frustrated interests be somehow secured? Or may the interests need reconstitution, and the level of aspiration need to be changed? These problems, not the symp­toms, require attention.

Where there is not frustration but furtherance, the back­ground situation must nevertheless be considered. Mabel seems particularly interested in history and is doing notably well, but a crush on the history teacher turns out to be the key factor in the situation. Ruth writes so well that her delighted English teacher hints at a possible career as an author, but Ruth is a shy little girl whose interest in literature is almost as unhealthy a substitute for real experience as daydreaming.

Bill’s long hours and beautiful work in the industrial arts shop are in part an escape from and compensation for his poor work in his other subjects. Mary’s interest in preparing to teach turns out to be more her mother’s interest in having her do so; Mary’s good work in normal school is motivated by her loyalty to her parent, not her eagerness for her prospective profession.

John’s enthusiastic good work in mathematics is really enthusiasm at beating Algernon, son of the community’s toplofty social leader. Whatever the nature of the emotional experience, if the background situation is not consid­ered, the teacher may make some sad or even ridiculous mistakes.

The puzzled mathematics teacher found that when Algrenon dropped out of the class John’s work slumped badly. Ruth’s interest in literature evaporated after she acquired a boy friend. When Mabel’s crush came to its inevitable disillusion­ment, she “hated” history.

The Importance of the Teacher’s Being “Objective” and Having Insight Regarding Possible Involvement of Her Own Emotions:

In the second place it is of prime importance that a teacher should not let her own emotions become so involved in her relations with her pupils that she acts to satisfy her own feelings rather than their needs A pupil’s inattention, stubbornness, or insolence naturally arouses irritation and countering aggressive responses in the teacher, and to indulge her own feelings by sarcastic remarks and yet other aggressive responses is a release and satisfaction to her.

But it usually only adds to the tension. Instead of reacting subjectively in terms of her own feelings, she should maintain an objective attitude of calm, friendly open mindedness and desire to understand what the trouble really is. Often nothing more is needed to handle a disciplinary situation that easy good nature and refusal to take a bit of excitement seriously.

All that the experienced teacher did in dealing with the post climbing boys was to maintain an easy placidity that calmed the class and made it evident that she could not be “razzed” into making a Roman holiday for them. On another occasion in her own class, a boy put his feet on his desk, while watching her covertly. The young teacher would have been irritated or hurt and ordered the feet down.

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But this experienced teacher, wise in such matters, seemed to have a blind spot for those feet. After a while the lad put them down. Then she thanked him for doing so, but went on to explain blandly that if he simply could not work in any other posture she would certainly not let the conventions of the classroom interfere with his education. The feet remained off the desk for the remainder of the semester.

“Objectivity” means further that the teacher will not be shocked or upset by various types of distressing information which may come to her. For instance, a desperate youngster may blurt out to her a story of some sex episode which seems to her very disgusting. But she must not show that feeling, any more than a physician should show disgust when he sees a sick person.

Nor should she go into a dither of sympathy for the unhappy youth, any more than a physician should exhaust his feelings in sympathy for his patient. An important contribution of a good physician is his calm un-emotionalized cheerfulness in the sickroom— the implication he gives that things after all are not so bad as the patient thinks, that many people have been ill before and recov­ered, that one shouldn’t worry, that if the patient will only keep calm and follow the doctor’s directions everything will be better before long.

Similarly the distraught young person needs calm reassurance, understanding of his problem, and commonsense suggestions as to what he should do. The well-informed teacher will know that various episodes and habits not uncommon among children are not as abnormal as was once supposed.

She will not be prudish or moralistic; she may give directly, or in suggested reading, information which will be helpful; she will have helpful suggestions or suggest where they may be obtained (perhaps from physician, nurse, or psychologist).

Very important but little mentioned is the fact that a teacher should be objective and on guard as to possible involvement of her own emotions in connection with her pupils’ likes and ac­complishments as well as their antagonisms and wrongdoings. Mabel’s interest in history (mentioned in the preceding section) was at first greatly encouraged by her teacher in large part because this teacher much enjoyed the girl’s admiring attentions.

The English teacher encouraged Ruth’s ideas of becoming an author and helped her obtain publication of a story in the local paper, because it added to the teacher’s own self-feeling and reputation as the one who had discovered and developed this girl’s “unusual talents.” The mathematics teacher did not like Algernon much better than John did, and encouraged John in part for that reason.

In fact, probably most of the time, the average teacher, being human, deals with her pupils’ emotional problems on the basis of her own feelings rather than theirs.

Deep-seated and long-established attitudes present especially difficult problems here. Two teachers in the same school, who may be called Miss Wright and Miss Frank, had both come from very strict homes. Miss Wright was a repressed sensitive woman who was so shocked and upset by student delin­quency as to be worse than useless in dealing with such cases.

But she did much to encourage and help shy sensitive girls such as she had been. Miss Frank was a big hearty rebel who was impatient with sensitive people but rather admired pupils with “spunk” even when they got into trouble. Pupils who liked one of these teachers usually disliked the other.

As faculty adviser, each was good (in fact, sometimes too sym­pathetic) in dealing with the emotional problems of some pupils but only stirred up trouble in contacts with others. In assigning students to advisers the shrewd principal kept these facts in mind, and the two teachers nicely supplemented each other, each handling especially well youngsters the other disliked.

The teacher’s as well as the pupil’s emotions are thus involved in most emotional problems arising in school—and to keep think­ing straight is indeed a task for all concerned. Perhaps the greatest single help in this matter (beyond understanding it) is a sense of humor. If a teacher can laugh at herself—and laugh with but not at the pupils—in considering these problems, then tensions are released and perspectives gained.

The Importance of a Developmental Rather Than a “Police” Point of View, and of Fostering Desirable Emotional Experience:

All too often administrators (and visiting parents) consider a teacher capable in proportion as she keeps order. And the teacher ap­proves those pupils who never upset the order in her room, but extends herself especially to restrain those lively youngsters who “disturb the peace.” This is a police point of view.

However, if a vigorous outgoing development of each child is considered the main objective of education, criteria for judging both teacher and pupil will be very different indeed. The quiet repressed child will be regarded as a problem—and also the repressive teacher who tends to make children so.

The good teacher will be recognized as one in whose room the pupils feel so secure and unrepressed that legitimate activities can be un­dertaken without hesitation. She will try to free them of frustra­tions, fears, and resentments, and resolve any impasse causing unpleasant emotion.

But she should do more; she should foster desirable emotional experiences. It was suggested at the beginning of this article that pleasant emotions were the result of the satisfaction of interests—in contrast to emotional distress which was caused by their frus­tration. In the preceding article, however, it was emphasized that interests are a complex product of many factors.

They have their roots in biological urges. But specific interests are largely determined by the total socio-economic and cultural environment in which the individual develops. The present article has stressed the importance of level of aspiration as determining the extent to which a person finds it needful, for his self-esteem and status, to carry through a particular interest.

A school can thus make a first contribution to a young person’s happiness by giving sensible direction to his interests so that they are congruent with his abilities and by keeping his goals so that they are feasible for him.

In the second place, a young person’s interests and aspirations at a given time being what they are (and assuming that they are good), the school can help him realize them. As was emphasized earlier in this article and in the discussion of special abilities in other articles, the satisfying of interests can be as pleasant and as up-building as their frustration is distressing and destructive. It is to this constructive task that the teacher’s chief efforts should be directed, and in which she can find her own greatest satis­factions.